India

V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including <i>Half a Life</i>, <i>A House for Mr Biswas</i>, <i>A Bend in the River </i>and most recently<i> The Masque of Africa, </i>and a collection of correspondence, <i>Letters Between A Father and Son</i>. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. <b>With an introduction from Paul Theroux</b>V.S. Naipaul first visited India in 1962 at twenty-nine. His most recent visit was in 2015 at eighty-two. The intervening years and visits sparked by an inquisitiveness about a country he had never seen but had been a dream of his since childhood have resulted in three books: <i>India: An Area of Darkness</i>, <i>A Wounded Civilization </i>and <i>A Million Mutinies Now</i>. <i>India</i> is the collection of all three, introduced by fellow traveller and writer Paul Theroux.

<i>An Area of Darkness</i> is V. S. Naipaul’s semi-autobiographical account – at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered – of his first visit to India, the land of his forebears. From the moment of his inauspicious arrival he experienced a cultural estrangement from the subcontinent. India was land of myths, an area of darkness closing up behind him as he travelled. What emerged was a masterful work of literature that provides a revelation both of India and of himself: a displaced person who paradoxically possesses a stronger sense of place than almost anyone.

<i>India: A Wounded Civilization</i> casts a more analytical eye than before over Indian attitudes, while recapitulating and further probing the feelings aroused in him by this vast, mysterious, and agonized country. A work of fierce candour and precision, it is also a generous description of one man’s complicated relationship with the country of his ancestors.

<i>India: A Million Mutinies Now</i> is the fascinating account of Naipaul's return journey to India and offers a kaleidoscopic, layered travelogue, encompassing a wide collage of religions, castes, and classes at a time when the percolating ideas of freedom threatened to shake loose the old ways. The brilliance of the book lies in Naipaul’s approach to a shifting, changing land from a variety of perspectives. <i>India: A Million Mutinies Now</i> is a truly perceptive work whose insights continue to inform travellers of all generations to India.